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As we all know, Chosen are sort of an Alpha Legion signature unit, with their infiltrate ability. I've been thinking about whether Rhinos are a good idea with Chosen, and have concluded that they should be almost compulsory. I have come up with some explanations and a few (sneaky) extra uses for the Rhinos.

Firstly, to counter the arguement that "If I take a Rhino, my Chosen can't infiltrate". Pg 75 of the rulebook covers this by saying "If a unit with this ability is deployed inside a transport vehicle, it cannot infiltrate." So, from this we can see that the unit does not always have to be deployed within it's dedicated transport, if it has been allocated one.

So, how does this help us? Well, firstly, there is the obvious outflanking move; pg 94 confirms that despite the previously stated rule, infiltrators with dedicated transports can indeed use them to outflank. This will allow your units more freedom to move and more protection when outflanking.

Then we have the Dawn of War deployment; only Troops with infiltrate may use their ability in this deployment - our Chosen have to come in from reserve like everyone else, so again, a Rhino can ensure they can be deployed swiftly and safely.

OK, so what about Pitched Battle and Spearhead deployments? If you are deploying first in either of these scenarios, you could deploy the Chosen's empty Rhino, but keep your Chosen ready to infiltrate. Once the opponent has deployed, you can weigh up your options (especially if your opponent knows you have some infiltrators to deploy) and decide if there is anywhere that the Chosen can deploy effectively using their ability. If there isn't (a cany opponent may make sure there aren't any close areas out of LOS), then you can always deploy the Chosen within 2" of the hatches on their Rhino. With the first turn, they can then embark and move off almost as if they had been deployed there all along. If you wanted to take this a step further, the Chosen could deploy next to any transport vehicle, be it from another Chosen unit, another CSM Troop rhino or even a Land raider. This idea may not work so well if an opponent seizes the initiative, but even clustered around the back of a Rhino, I bet your chosen would have more protection than being infiltrated up close and personal.

Equally, once a regular opponent has seen you do this a few times, you could then use the rhino to deploy in a refused flank formation: that is place the chosen Rhino in one place, so he deploys to counter that threat, but then infiltrate the Chosen onto the other flank, leaving him facing off against an empty tank. The beauty of these tactics is that you can make these decisions mostly after the opponent has deployed, giving you flexibility.

Deploying second in the above mentioned scenarios allows you more freedom to place your Chosen in their rhino in response to the enemy deployment. You can also keep your Chosen out of their Rhino to try and deny any enemy infiltrators space to operate - if you loose the roll to deploy infiltrators first, you can then still fall back to deploying the Chosen near their rhino, as above. (This would work equally well if you were going first, but the enemy had infiltrators too)

With Seize Ground and Capture and Control missions, extra empty rhinos can also be used as mobile cover, 'spare' transports moving alongside other CSM units and have the ability to contest objectives. Plus the more vehicles you have, the more anti-tank weapons have to think about splitting their fire.

One possible downside to these extra transports are they give up kill points in Annhilation missions. However, I believe that they could still be of some use just for the manouverability aspect, especially in Dawn of War deployments. You could also leave them in reserve (seperate from the Chosen unit), and hope they don't arrive. Even if they do, just try and skulk around with them .

Still this downside is just a 2 in 9 possibility, (I'm discounting the DoW deployments there) and still doesn't matter if you kill more of the opponent's units than he does of yours!

If you want to take Chosen as a 'bodyguard' unit for your Chaos Lord, again they will loose their infiltrate ability should you do so, making the Rhino more worth while. Another sneaky tactic would be to just deploy a Chaos Lord all alone, (but next to the Rhino) making him a tempting target, then infiltrate the Chosen to be his bodyguard, and embark the whole lot in the first turn.

So now all I have to do is paint more Rhinos!

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"I encourage my men to explore the philosophy of bloodshed; to understand the intellectual structure that informs their killing" 'Alpharius', Legion

I tried them without a transport with Icon of slaanesh, 3 power weapons, and a powerfist. Needless to say I was fighting World Eaters, and they refused to get into combat with them once they asked what the stats were.

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"The roar of our victory will shatter the Imperium, and silence the Gods. Hydra Dominatus." - Veron

Up to this point I've only used a utility unit of 7 Chosen with heavy Bolter, Plasma, Combi-flamer and power weapon. They've been quite versatile, but not super-amazing. Still, I can't really fault them for general shoring up of my lines.

However, I've just completed a unit of 8 Chosen with two meltas, two power weapons and lightning claw. I also chose the IoS to go with these guys. But with those weapons, I'm definately going to have to bring them along in a rhino, hence the beginnings of the above thought process.

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"I encourage my men to explore the philosophy of bloodshed; to understand the intellectual structure that informs their killing" 'Alpharius', Legion

ive alwys been quite fond of having the rhino with the chosen. as you said you can still leave the rhino behind and infiltrate the chosen and use it for another unit.

i think where this helps alot is if you decice to outflank and you turn up on the empty side of the table. without a rhino its a very long walk and you waste the chosen if you dont get into the fight or are too far to contest an objective.

also a rhino coming in from the right side can do a hell of alot of tank shocking in the enemy lines. especaliy when you have an opponent that likes his gun lines in a nice straight line .

as for the loadout i think people underestamate the lascannon in a small unit of chosen. its nice hitting a russ on the side armour when infiltrated right. and when its a small unit they either put too much into taking it out or they ignore it and it just has fun all game picking off its targets

Makes sense... I was really trying to see what category the lascannon fits into; that is, is it being taken as a specific AT asset, with the other Chosen as almost ablative wounds (ok, maybe over-simplifying it there), or is the lascannon one of a whole range of options available.

You see a lot of 'power lists' touted around with 4 or 5 of the same special weapon, and I can't help thinking that I'm missing something when I think that the ability to do that is inferior to the versatility offered by the list (aside from the fact that havocs can do it too). It's nice to see others value the versatility of Chosen - although maybe it's also a sign of a true Alpha Legion player

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"I encourage my men to explore the philosophy of bloodshed; to understand the intellectual structure that informs their killing" 'Alpharius', Legion

think it's the later. Versatility leads to greater utility IMO. The lascannon is great for hammering tanks, works great with the plama for picking off termies, and helps garuntee the units ability to be a open sore on your opponent. The two plama guns are great on marines, nasty against light vehicles and help threaten rear and side armor on a number of other vehicles, while the powerfist and powersword make a nice cc monster, and the other chosen do well in cc as well as anti infantry shooting. Good all round unit.

I tend to run 2 units of chosen in my list 5 chosen with meltas and 5 with plasma guns I always give the melta squad a rhino whether I outflank or not as infiltrating them doesnt do much good as they almost never infiltrate close enough to vehicles on the first tun to do any good before being shot to pieces.

The plasma gun squad on the other hand is a real mixed bag and tend to be situational sometimes its better to infiltrate them in cover and use them as a good fire base in the middle of the table or ouflank to try to flank alongside the melta squad. Be warned however there are times that you will roll masses of 1s and kill most of your squad at the most in opportune times

Recently ive even taken to putting my chaos lord in a rhino with the melta squad and use them as a combo tank hunting assault squad as 5 meltas and a plasma pistol are great for thinning out squads with 2+ armour or feel no pain.

More and more, multi-special weapons are looking attractive on outflankers. Although I must admit that I'm more prone to using a mix of weapons in my chosen; the last squad I painted had 3 plasma and two meltas.

Also, probably a good thread to add a reminder that in the new rules you now can infiltrate your Chosen in their Rhinos, but I shoul add that you can no longer deploy ICs with Chosen at the start of the game at all. (So your Lord's going to be starting the game away from the Chosen )

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"I encourage my men to explore the philosophy of bloodshed; to understand the intellectual structure that informs their killing" 'Alpharius', Legion